It is now two minutes to nuclear doomsday according to the announcement on January 24 in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Threats of nuclear war by the United States against the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea and others are increasing. Our humanity is experiencing a real existential threat.
Thus, it is not surprising that the anti-nuke movement is growing again as seen by the the Stop Banking the Bomb campaign against PNC Bank. The campaign’s endorser list now stands at twenty-one organizations, double what it was last month. Endorsers now include national organizations such as Peace Action, People’s Congress of Resistance, United States Peace Council, and Veterans For Peace. And the campaign continues to grow with over 45 people on the coordinating committee—again double the total last month. A website will be launched in February and more direct actions are being planned in the very near future here in the Pittsburgh region.
Stop Banking the Bomb is also in consultation with other chapters of our sponsoring organizations in Butler, PA, Morgantown, WV, Philadelphia, PA, New York, NY and Washington, D.C. to organize and execute direct actions against PNC in those cities. A Direct-Action Packet has been created that other groups can use to carry out non-violent direct actions against their local PNC bank branches. Not only is the campaign growing, it is now spreading to wherever PNC Bank is operating.
Second picket at the PNC tower
On January 18, more than 25 concerned everyday folks from the Pittsburgh region came out for the second time and braved the cold to protest PNC Bank’s more than one-billion-dollar investment in nuclear weapons manufacturers. They demanded that PNC Bank sells off these loans and investments and create a binding corporate policy to never invest in nuclear weapons manufacturers again.
Boisterous picketers handed out over 250 flyers to PNC employees and other workers on their lunch breaks, while five of PNC Bank’s senior executive leadership looked on nervously from inside their finance-capitalist headquarters’ building. PNC Bank broke off negotiations with our team recently and said they would not return to the table until we agreed to loosen our demands and cease from our public actions. But we will continue to expand our campaign, increase our public activities and direct-actions, and keep putting on the pressure until PNC realizes that negotiation is the only way forward.
Connecting the dots
Many people are unaware of how the Military Industrial Complex works. The United States regime, which wants to spend one trillion dollars on new nuclear weapons over the next ten years, does not actually make nuclear weapons. Private corporations and their financiers (banks like PNC) are the actual producers of these weapons and it is in their best interest to have the U.S. regime keep purchasing (and using) more and more weapons in order for these capitalists to continue to make even more profits. Through their lobbyists, political contributions, media glorification of U.S. imperialism, the finance-capitalists actually use the U.S. regime to achieve their goal of more and more profits. The extremely sad part of this is that it is the everyday worker’s tax dollars which pay for the weapons and our deposits in the banks that finance their manufacture. We need to bring to the attention of the public that these large U.S. bank/corporate monopolies are using our money to finance death and destruction all around the world. These weapons do not make us safer; rather they make us live in constant fear. And we do not have to be a part of it. We have the power; it is our money and we can decide how to use it.
In the near future, we will start gathering folk who will begin moving their money out of PNC Bank to community banks and credit unions. Our multi-pronged effort against PNC Bank will become the symbol for other activist groups to follow and for other corporate banks to be put on notice. They are next!
On a positive note, we believe we are presenting PNC Bank an excellent opportunity to side with the people, its depositors, and Stop Banking the Bomb!
For more information or to endorse our campaign, please contact us at [email protected] or look for upcoming events on our Facebook page .
